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Learning About Relationships

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Positive Relationships

Abstract

This chapter explores lessons that researchers have learned about how to support children in developing the skills and understandings that will enable them to engage in positive relationships during their childhood and as they become adults. It begins by synthesizing existing research on the stage-salient developmental relationship tasks of early and middle childhood, focusing on the context of school and on the relationships amongst children, parents and teachers. Next, it highlights dimensions of relationships that have near universal positive effects for children, dependent upon context and developmental stage. Summarizing some common ways that children learn to engage in healthy relationships during early and middle childhood, it provides examples of three specific programmes that attempt to improve the quality of children’s relationships. Finally, it suggests the need for a shift in how we consider supporting the development of healthy relationships in children.

Gretchen Brion-Meisels is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research seeks to explore holistic student support processes that build on the knowledge of students and communities. She is a former editor of the Harvard Educational Review and helped edit a volume entitled, Humanizing Education: Critical Alternatives to Reform (2010).

Stephanie M. Jones is an assistant professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Jones’ research focuses on the developmental impact of educational interventions targeting children’s social-emotional and academic skills. She is involved as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator in a number of evaluation studies of preschool and school-based programmes in social-emotional learning and literacy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In their longitudinal studies of a cohort of infants in New York City, Thomas and Chess (1986) found that ‘no one single pattern of person–environment interaction could be applied as a general rule for predicting the developmental course’, but rather that healthy development was the result of ‘the properties of the environment and its expectations and demands and the subjects temperament and other characteristics’ (p. 49). They referred to this as ‘goodness of fit’.

  2. 2.

    For example, when parents are involved in school, students show improvement in grades and test scores, increased motivation and self esteem, higher attendance rates and lower dropout rates (Christenson 1999).

  3. 3.

    One example of this type of effect is that children who have positive relationships with their ­teachers tend to be more accepted by their peers (Ladd et al. 1999) and to be well-liked and considered socially competent by other students in the classroom (Hughes et al. 2001).

  4. 4.

    Here, cognitive competencies develop skills and understandings that support active participation in civic life; emotional competencies develop skills and understandings that support one’s ability to respond to his/her own emotions as well as others’ emotions; communicative competencies develop the capacity to have productive dialogues; and integrative competencies develop skills that require social, emotional and cognitive competencies (e.g. brainstorming compromises to a conflict).

  5. 5.

    According to Sameroff (2010), self-regulation occurs in the context of ‘other regulation’ as children rely on adults, peers and teachers to learn about the ‘range and limits of their behaviour’ (p. 15).

  6. 6.

    Specifically, Sameroff discusses the ‘opportunity structure’ construct from sociology and the ‘meaning making’ construct from anthropology. These constructs centre relationships in the process of development by reinforcing the mediating role that relationships have on individual growth. Sociology, Sameroff (2010) writes, can teach us that ‘individuals are embedded in networks of relationships that constrain or encourage different aspects of individual behaviour’; anthropology can help us explore the differences in meaning systems across groups of people, or “how different cultures think about their practices” (p. 20).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Gretchen Brion-Meisels & Stephanie M. Jones

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  1. Gretchen Brion-Meisels
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  1. University of Western Sydney, Milperra, Australia

    Sue Roffey

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Brion-Meisels, G., Jones, S.M. (2012). Learning About Relationships. In: Roffey, S. (eds) Positive Relationships. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2147-0_4

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